Paper Towns — Chapter no 16

16.

Tuesday evening, when she had been gone six days, I talked to my parents.

It wasn’t a big decision or anything; I just did. I was sitting at the kitchen

counter while Dad chopped vegetables and Mom browned some beef in a

skillet. Dad was razzing me about how much time I’d spent reading such a

short book, and I said, “Actually, it’s not for English; it seems like maybe

Margo left it for me to find.” They got quiet, and then I told them about

Woody Guthrie and the Whitman.

“She clearly likes to play these games of incomplete information,” my

dad said.

“I don’t blame her for wanting attention,” my mom said, and then to me

added, “but that doesn’t make her well-being your responsibility.”

Dad scraped the carrots and onions into the skillet. “Yeah, true. Not that

either of us could diagnose her without seeing her, but I suspect she’ll be

home soon.”

“We shouldn’t speculate,” my mom said to him quietly, as if I couldn’t

hear or something. Dad was about to respond but I interrupted.

“What should I do?”

“Graduate,” my mom said. “And trust that Margo can take of herself, for

which she has shown a great talent.”

“Agreed,” my dad said, but after dinner, when I went back to my room

and played Resurrection on mute, I could hear them talking quietly back

and forth. I could not hear the words, but I could hear the worry.

Later that night, Ben called my cell.

“Hey,” I said.

“Bro,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“I’m about to go shoe shopping with Lacey.”

“Shoe shopping?”

“Yeah. Everything’s thirty percent off from ten to midnight. She wants

me to help her pick out her prom shoes. I mean, she had some, but I was

over at her house yesterday and we agreed that they weren’t . . . you know,

you want the perfect shoes for prom. So she’s going to return them and then

we’re going to Burdines and we’re going to like pi—”

“Ben,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Dude, I don’t want to talk about Lacey’s prom shoes. And I’ll tell you

why: I have this thing that makes me really uninterested in prom shoes. It’s

called a penis.”

“I’m really nervous and I can’t stop thinking that I actually kinda really

like her not just in the she’s-a-hot-prom-date way but in the she’s-actually-

really-cool-and-I-like-hanging-out-with-her kinda way. And, like, maybe

we’re going to go to prom and we’ll be, like, kissing in the middle of the

dance floor and everyone will be like, holy shit and, you know, everything

they ever thought about me will just go out the window—”

“Ben,” I said, “stop the dork babble and you’ll be fine.” He kept talking

for a while, but I finally got off the phone with him.

I lay down and started to feel a little depressed about prom. I refused to feel

any kind of sadness over the fact that I wasn’t going to prom, but I had—

stupidly, embarrassingly—thought of finding Margo, and getting her to

come home with me just in time for prom, like late on Saturday night, and

we’d walk into the Hilton ballroom wearing jeans and ratty T-shirts, and

we’d be just in time for the last dance, and we’d dance while everyone

pointed at us and marveled at the return of Margo, and then we’d fox-trot

the hell out of there and go get ice cream at Friendly’s. So yes, like Ben, I

harbored ridiculous prom fantasies. But at least I didn’t say mine out loud.

Ben was such a self-absorbed idiot sometimes, and I had to remind

myself why I still liked him. If nothing else, he sometimes got surprisingly

bright ideas. The door thing was a good idea. It didn’t work, but it was a

good idea. But obviously Margo had intended it to mean something else to

me.

To me.

The clue was mine. The doors were mine!

On my way to the garage, I had to walk through the living room, where

Mom and Dad were watching TV. “Want to watch?” my mom asked.

“They’re about to crack the case.” It was one of those solve-the-murder

crime shows.

“No, thanks,” I said, and breezed past them through the kitchen and into

the garage. I found the widest flathead screwdriver and then stuck it in the

waistband of my khaki shorts, cinching my belt tight. I grabbed a cookie out

of the kitchen and then walked back through the living room, my gait only

slightly awkward, and while they watched the televised mystery unfold, I

removed the three pins from my bedroom door. When the last one came off,

the door creaked and started to fall, so I swung it all the way open against

the wall with one hand, and as I swung it, I saw a tiny piece of paper—

about the size of my thumbnail—flutter down from the door’s top hinge.

Typical Margo. Why hide something in her own room when she could hide

it in mine? I wondered when she’d done it, how she’d gotten in. I couldn’t

help but smile.

It was a sliver of the Orlando Sentinel, half straight edges and half

ripped. I could tell it was the Sentinel because one ripped edge read “do

Sentinel May 6, 2.” The day she’d left. The message was clearly from her. I

recognized her handwriting:

8328 bartlesville Avenue

I couldn’t put the door back on without beating the pins back into place

with the screwdriver, which would have definitely alerted my parents, so I

just propped the door on its hinges and kept it all the way open. I pocketed

the pins and then went to my computer and looked up a map of 8328

Bartlesville Avenue. I’d never heard of the street.

It was 34.6 miles away, way the hell out Colonial Drive almost to the

town of Christmas, Florida. When I zoomed in on the satellite image of the

building, it looked like a black rectangle fronted by dull silver and then

grass behind. A mobile home, maybe? It was hard to get a sense of scale,

because it was surrounded by so much green.

I called Ben and told him. “So I was right!” he said. “I can’t wait to tell

Lacey, because she totally thought it was a good idea, too!”

I ignored the Lacey comment. “I think I’m gonna go,” I said.

“Well, yeah, of course you’ve gotta go. I’m coming. Let’s go on Sunday

morning. I’ll be tired from all-night prom partying, but whatever.”

“No, I mean I’m going tonight,” I said.

“Bro, it’s dark. You can’t go to a strange building with a mysterious

address in the dark. Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie?”

“She could be there,” I said.

“Yeah, and a demon who can only be nourished by the pancreases of

young boys could also be there,” he said. “Christ, at least wait till

tomorrow, although I’ve got to order her corsage after band, and then I want

to be home in case Lacey IM’s, because we’ve been IM’ing a lot—”

I cut him off. “No, tonight. I want to see her.” I could feel the circle

closing. In an hour, if I hurried, I could be looking at her.

“Bro, I am not letting you go to some sketchy address in the middle of

the night. I will Tase your ass if necessary.”

“Tomorrow morning,” I said, mostly to myself. “I’ll just go tomorrow

morning.” I was tired of having perfect attendance anyway. Ben was quiet. I

heard him blowing air between his front teeth.

“I do feel a little something coming on,” he said. “Fever. Cough. Aches.

Pains.” I smiled. After I hung up, I called Radar.

“I’m on the other line with Ben,” he said. “Let me call you back.”

He called back a minute later. Before I could even say hello, Radar said,

“Q, I’ve got this terrible migraine. There’s no way I can go to school

tomorrow.” I laughed.

After I got off the phone, I stripped down to T-shirt and boxers, emptied

my garbage can into a drawer, and put the can next to the bed. I set my

alarm for the ungodly hour of six in the morning, and spent the next few

hours trying in vain to fall asleep.